Why Every College Student Should Have A Resume Website

For most students, the idea of a resume website never even comes to mind. We’re so used to putting one together in Word and printing it out whenever a career fair or interview comes around, so it seems like that’s the only option! I recently discovered a new trend though: making a personal resume website.

As a computer engineering major, I’m always trying to come up with new coding projects, so this weekend I decided to create my own (you can check it out here!).

Note: This post was made in February 2016, so by the time you’re reading this there’s a good chance I’ve changed the design a bit. The picture below is what it looked like originally though!

As you can tell, a resume website is just like a regular resume. It has all your basic sections:

About me

Skills

Projects/Work

Experience

The great thing about having your resume on a website is that you aren’t limited to a single page. You can add as much information as you want and it still looks organized, so if you want to add, say, a hobby section, that’s super easy to do.

A lot of people think these kinds of resumes are only for developers or designers, but that’s totally not true.

Students of any major can benefit from a resume website!

Think of this website as a marketing campaign for yourself. It’s the place where you can brag about your skills, show what you’ve done, and be super creative with how you present that info.

Journalism major?

You can use this website to link to anything you’ve written, including PDF files of work that isn’t online. If you’ve worked on any sort of publication design, like a newspaper or magazine, you can add images of them and give a summary of the skills you used, what you learned from the project, and your role in the project!

Business major?

Experience is a big deal to you, so you’ll want to use this website to show off any roles you’ve held. Having this information online makes it easy to link to any businesses you’ve interned at or projects you’ve worked on. If you’ve done any marketing or advertising work, you can add some images of graphics you created or stats that show how you improved a company’s social reach!

Fine arts major?

Show off your skills by adding images of art projects, linking to videos of your dance routines, or listing the productions you’ve participated in. You can get really creative with how you present this stuff, especially if you have some great shots of yourself in action!

The benefits of having a resume website

You can share your resume with anyone, at any time. This is great for those spontaneous moments when you bump into a recruiter and don’t have a paper resume on hand!

It’s easy to update, and you don’t have to reprint every time you do!

You can really show off your personality. Maybe that’s through a bright color scheme, or by including side projects you’ve worked on for fun.

Most people haven’t hopped on this trend, especially outside the comp sci department, so having a personal website will make you stand out amongst your competitors!

How to get your own!

There are several options for creating your own resume website, and the one you choose really depends on the information you want to share and how you want to share it.

Github Pages – Free, requires coding knowledge

If all you’re looking for is a simple, one page website to display basic resume info, I’d suggest making a Github account and using their Page feature to make a free one! That’s what I did with my website, and it’s definitely the easiest/cheapest option. To do this, you’ll be using the Github Pages feature, which allows a user to create one personal website with a “yourusername.github.io” domain. It does require coding knowledge, but if you’re interested in learning to code, this could be the project for you! I’d suggest taking a Codecademy course on HTML/CSS before tackling this one.

Wix – Free, no coding knowledge required

If you’re willing to sacrifice a bit in terms of design freedom for the convenience of a drag-and-drop interface, Wix has several templates made specifically for resume websites! The templates are image-friendly, so if you’re a photographer or have any physical work you want to show off, this option could be great for you.

WordPress – Hosting (about $7/month) and Theme ($20-$50)

If you’re wanting something fancier than a single-page website, WordPress is your best choice. There are tons of resume template options out there to choose from, and ThemeForest is one of my favorite places to look for them. Know that this option does cost money though! You’ll have to pay for hosting (a monthly payment that anyone with a self-hosted website, like a WordPress website, has to pay) and the theme you choose. You can check out this post to learn how to set up your WordPress website, and instead of using a blog theme, you’ll just use whatever theme you purchase!

Do you have a resume website? Link to it in the comments so we can all check it out!

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Hey there! I'm Jessica, a 22 year old Software Engineer at Google living in Seattle, Washington. Welcome to my blog! Expect a lot of college, blogging, career, and healthy living advice along with some mixed-in life ramblings!

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